Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Updike died of lung cancer today near his home in Beverly Farms, Mass. Known primarily for his sexually explicit novels, Updike showed a spiritual side with his poem “Seven Stanzas at Easter,” which was written for the Religious Arts Festival in 1960 held at Clifton Lutheran Church in Marblehead, Mass. The poem won Best of Show and $100 for Updike, which he promptly gave back to the church.

According to an Associated Press interview in 2006, Updike, a lifelong churchgoer, was influenced by his faith but had his doubts:

“I remember the times when I was wrestling with these issues that I would feel crushed. I was crushed by the purely materialistic, atheistic account of the universe.

“I am very prone to accept all that the scientists tell us, the truth of it, the authority of the efforts of all the men and woman spent trying to understand more about atoms and molecules. But I can’t quite make the leap of unfaith, as it were, and say, ‘This is it. Carpe diem (seize the day), and tough luck.’”